Various manners and methods of administering medication have been known. By way of example, medicines related to immune system can be administered by hypodermic injection as well as by nasal administration. Nasal administration refers to a method of spraying, to each of the nasal cavities, a prescribed, equal amount of medicine, which method is suitably used as it causes no pain at the time of administration.
Nasal administration requires a number of administering operations as described above. For the operations, one administering apparatus may be used for each dose, suction and administration of medicine may be repeated, or a number of doses may be sucked at one time and the medicine may be discharged a number of times.
If one administering apparatus is used for each dose and the medication is to be administered a plurality of times, the user must prepare as many apparatuses as the number of doses, resulting in a considerable amount of waste. If medicine sucking and administering operations are repeated for each dose, it means that the suction and discharge of medicine must be done by the number of doses, which is rather burdensome for the user.
If a number of doses is sucked at one time and the medicine of a desired amount is administered a number of times, adjustment is required of the user to realize discharge of an exact amount of medicine each time, since the medicine must be discharged a number of times, each time by a prescribed amount. Conventionally, discharge of an exact amount of medicine relies on a scale provided on the apparatus. It is accepted as a given that adjustment is troublesome and requires excessive power of concentration. Further, since it relies on a scale, whether or not an exact amount of medicine has been discharged cannot be known. The discharged dosage may vary from time to time.
Patent Document 1 proposes, as an administering apparatus capable of dispensing a number of doses, a syringe that has a stopper receiver on a barrel and stoppers on a rod to regulate an amount of movement, so that a medicine can be discharged a number of times, each by a desired amount without relying on a scale. The syringe includes: a rod having a plurality of ribs provided at different positions in outer circumferential direction and stoppers different in length from a tip end of the rod formed on respective ribs; and a stopper receiver that engages with each stopper, provided on an outer cylinder. By rotating and moving forward the rod such that the stopper engages with the stopper receiver, an amount of medicine that corresponds to the stopper position can be discharged. After one stopper and the stopper receiver engage, by rotating and moving forward the rod again such that the stopper receiver engages with another stopper, further discharge of medicine becomes possible. Therefore, it is possible to discharge a medicine a number of times each by a determined amount, without relying on the scale.